Charitable donations are made in many different ways, and in many different amounts. When the quantum is large, it is cost effective to submit the donation as a single transaction. It is then relatively simple for both the donor and the recipient to record the sending and receiving of the donation, and be satisfied as to the safe transmission and delivery of the donation.
Every year, however, many millions of small value donations are made, some involving the giving of a single coin or some loose change. Typically, these smaller donations are collected together—perhaps in a collecting tin—and aggregated by the collector before being forwarded to the recipient. Sometimes there are multiple layers of aggregation. Separate donations of individual coins may go into a tin. The contents of several collecting tins may be merged. Proceeds from various collectors over various days may be aggregated into a single banking account. By this stage, it is impossible for an individual donor to know whether the single coin he or she donated has truly been included in the total sum forwarded to the charity. Similarly, the charity has no way of knowing what they should expect to receive into their bank account in respect of all the individual donations.
Various systems, including online internet based systems, exist for receiving small donations. Some provided a limited form of acknowledgement of receipt or notice of delivery. At present, however, no system affords the donor or charity or other interested party the means to separately identify each individual donation within an aggregation of multiple donations, and to track its process and delivery.
In present times, most donations—including those of relatively small value—are made electronically. Even where the initial donation is made in cash, it is often made in a way or at a location where the details can cost-effectively be recorded electronically: as where small change received back from a retail transaction may be donated into a charity box located on the counter. In such a situation, it is feasible for the donation to be part of the overall retail transaction, with the shopper deciding to donate the one or two coins that might otherwise have been returned in change directly to charity via the electronic cash register.
The concept of assigning letters and parcels a unique tracking reference, so that their passage can be tracked and their final delivery can be confirmed, is well established.
The present invention of which this application is the subject sets out to apply similar principles and concepts, suitably modified, so that each individual donation—no matter how small—can be uniquely referenced and tracked: and the final delivery of each donation to the intended recipient can be shown and proved.
It would not be cost effective to process each small donation through the necessary banking or other accounting processes individually. Nor would it be cost effective for a charity to manually receipt each individual small donation. Thus the present invention seeks to build on the tangentially relevant art of tracking physical parcels and letters, such that a tracking method may also be effected for non-physical intangible items, of which charitable donations are one example.
Charitable donations are transacted in various ways. Small change is given at the counter in shops and coffee houses. Credit and debit card transactions are made at banks or over internet websites. Specialist payment systems such as Pay Pal are used. Calls are solicited to specialist premium rate phone lines and SMS numbers. In all these methods, the small individual amounts of donations are aggregated before being received by the charity and there is no convenient and secure way to determine that every donation collected in has actually been delivered.
The desired transparency and accountability that the present system achieves beyond that offered by any background art is achieved by the use and communication of a series of cross-referenced reports published either via the Internet or by other means. The inclusion of universally unique tracking reference allocated to each donation transaction allows the progress of each individual donation to be tracked and verified through each and every stage of each donation's progress towards final delivery.
Whilst a major application of the present invention relates to charitable donations of financial value, the subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, the present invention may find application for the tagging and tracking of a wide variety of intangible items, whether of financial value or not, and whether for charitable purposes or not, and this background is only provided to illustrate one exemplary technology area where some embodiments described herein can be practiced.